A survey of 11-16 year olds in Britain shows that 60% are not familiar with the term ”Final Solution” – Nazi Germany’s plan to exterminate European Jews. Despite the Holocaust being specified on the Britain’s national curriculum as a subject that students must be taught, only 37 percent knew that the Holocaust claimed the lives of six million Jews, with many drastically underestimating the death toll, reports the London Times.
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History Lessons Not Sticking
by Robert PondiscioMarch 9th, 2009
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I’m not sure I’m concerned that students didn’t know the particular phrase used to describe Hitler’s plan to exterminate the Jewish people: “Final Solution.” I’m somewhat concerned that more than one third of the students didn’t know the number of Jewish people killed in the Holocaust. But we need to keep in mind that these are 11-16 year olds. The critical knowledge is that the Holocaust perpetrated by Germany killed millions of Jewish (and other) people, and was an atrocity.
Comment by Attorney DC — March 9, 2009 @ 10:22 am
The first targets were the “unfit” – the physically handicapped, the mentally retarded and the phychiatric cases. Those people were removed very promptly, since eugenics was a significant part of the whole Aryan idea. Propagation of the fit (healthy Aryans) and removal of the unfit. Gypsies were also targets. The Jews were the largest group, but they weren’t the only one and that, too, should be remembered.
Comment by momof4 — March 9, 2009 @ 3:59 pm
Most kids remember very little of any history at all and that is often scrambled. Modern education traps today’s students in the provincialism of their own time and place by its obsessive anti-narrative,ahistorical, pro-’skills’ emphasis. Why should anyone be surprised that this particular history is not remembered, as enormously appalling as it was.
Comment by MD Teacher — March 10, 2009 @ 3:29 pm